Designing Community Space in Mixed-Income Housing

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Designing Community Space in Mixed-Income Housing

• Prof. Lawrence Vale
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• August 2004

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Which Mix?

• Mixing income extremes or a continuum?
• Mixing source-of-income?
• Mixing ages and family structures?
• Mixing races?
• Mixing uses? (i.e., beyond mixing people)

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• Who should benefit from redeveloped public
  housing?

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Which goal?

• Wholesale replacement of one community with
  another?
• OR-- Nurturing and rewarding the best elements of
  a distressed community with new resources?

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Values Drive Design Choices

• Are poor people regarded (by developers) as
  something to minimize or cope with? OR are they
  seen as deserving of better living conditions?
• Do programming and design efforts genuinely
  engage existing residents? OR are these new
  communities planned for someone else?

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Public Housing site designers resisted engagement
with streets and avoided any space that was not
either wholly public or wholly private.
USHA, Planning the Site (1939)
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Minimum Spacing StandardsBetween Public Housing
Buildings
1 Story 50 Feet
2 Story 55 Feet
3 Story 60 Feet
4 Story 65 Feet
6 Story 75 Feet
Source United States Housing Authority, Planning
the Site Design of Low-Rent Housing Projects
(1939), later codified in Federal Public Housing
Authority, Minimum Physical Standards and
Criteria for the Planning and Design of
FPHA-Aided Urban Low-Rent Housing (1945).
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Plan D, Judged to be the Lowest Cost
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By 1945, Many Different Kinds of Public Housing
Site Plans Prevailed, as Open Space Became More
Prominent
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Distressed Public Housing (in Boston) by 1980
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Two Examples of Re-designed Public Housing in
Boston

• Harbor Point--formerly Columbia Point, 1502
  units, built in 1954 and redeveloped 1978-1990
• Commonwealth (aka Fidelis Way), 648 units,
  built in 1951 and redeveloped 1980-1985

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• When I took office in 1993 there was no better
  example in the country of what was possible, of
  literally going from worst to first, than Harbor
  Point. Harbor Point was the pioneer, the
  trailblazer. It gave us confidence.
• --Henry Cisneros

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The community is not interested in being
planned for the community is interested in
planning--Columbia Point resident Terry Mair
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Subsidized residents treat this more like a
neighborhood, doing things out on the porches, in
the streets, on the grass, as opposed to
shorter-term residents whose domain is really
just their units, Theyre only in the common
spaces as they go and come from their units.
Thats a different way of using space. And if we
decide that were going to police and patrol
things like noise, things like kids, things like
black presencethis becomes problematic.--Apri
l Young (resident anthropologist at Harbor Point)
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Bostons Commonwealth Development
Rendering and View from the early 1950s
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Commonwealth Development in the 1950s
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Commonwealth Development in the early
1970s Still Socially Viable
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By the late 1970s, Many Abandoned Public Housing
Apartments Were Vandalized Even Before They Could
be Re-Rented
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CommonwealthBefore.. and After
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Revitalization by Design
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Re-landscaping Commonwealth Development, 1980s
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Commonwealth Development under Private
Management, 1990s
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Children Also Help Set Rules for Community
Behavior
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Conclusions

• Successful new communities are built from the
  successful parts of older communities.
• Design process matters as much as design
  products.
• Public space must be planned for and managed
  through agreed-upon norms.
• New communities should be city pieces, not
  enclaves.
• Private spaces should provide informal
  surveillance of public places.